21 August - Will Bexley Council ever tell the truth?
It is always a little frustrating when readers send interesting information and then say I must not publish it.
In the most recent case I planned on defying the instructions and make vague allusions but yesterday most of it
leaked on to X which allows me to relax a little on any confidentiality requirements.
In case you didn’t see them, the X posts returned to the issue of the Oakwood sports
ground alongside the VCD Athletics ground. The owner, Oakwood Pavilion Limited, is Kulvinder
Singh by another name. He has been seen driving the Oakwood excavator and it was
one of
his Leather Bottle henchmen who assaulted me there a week ago, but Bexley
Council pretends to know nothing about it. People have asked, I have seen the
replies, and they say there have been no Planning Applications and it is basically a man attending to his £1·2 million garden
which he is entitled to do without permission.
That
is true enough but Bexley Council knows exactly what is going on. It is all in their Local Plan documentation from 2022 and 2023.
Here is the relevant extract.
More recently, former Conservative Crayford Councillor Geraldene Lucia-Hennis was telling her residents that she had been fighting for the best
deal for four years. It is all out there on the web but Bexley Council know nothing about what is going on!
Most of the sports facilities will be restored, the Councillor said, including tennis courts and
football with padel where the bowls club used to play.
There will be two blocks of new houses, seven in one, eight in the other, and a new site entrance with car
parking. But Bexley Council knows nothing about it.
I
have a copy of the plan handed out by Mr. Singh to interested parties including Bexley Council.
I do not live nearby and have little interest in sport but it looks a decent
enough scheme to me. But Bexley Council knows nothing about it.
The thing is, as always with the schemes Mr. Singh
proposes, is not whether they are good or bad but why he finds it necessary to
have his men assault those who take an interest in his activities and why Bexley Council backs even the most
dubious of plans. Like Ye Olde Leather Bottle and 238 Woolwich Road. Time and
time again work gets under way without planning permission which is then
retrospectively waved through. On the rare occasions enforcement notices are issued, nothing happens.
If a developer is effectively told he can do what he likes and Bexley Council
will always bend over for him, then one can hardly blame him for taking advantage of it.
But how has that situation come to pass?
In recent years the enterprising Mr. Singh has often been seen side by side with the former Planning Committee Chairman
and his wife but that cosy arrangement pre-dates Councillor Brian Bishop’s appointment as Planning Chairman.
And how come he hobknobs with other Councillors too? John Davey and Geraldene
Lucia-Hennis are shown here and the Mayor comes running when summoned.
It is hard not to think something unsavoury must be going on, but what?
Index to related blogs.
19 August (Part 2) - Dirty business
It has been brought to my attention
- thank you Roger - that the traffic chaos on Harrow Manorway is caused by a
small heap of earth, little bigger than a molehill, placed on the carriageway
when there was plenty of room on the footpath. (The two arrows point at it.)
I think my
point from yesterday, that the people who supervise those who dig up roads
and erect signs are as thick as the proverbial two short planks, is proved.
19 August (Part 1) - Holes and houses
While
enquiries continue into the work going on at the Oakwood Ground and its
ownership, Bexley Council continues on it mission to bring Bexley to a
standstill. On Harrow Manorway the traffic queues extend to Yarnton Way to the north and
the bottom of Knee Hill to the south. There is no obvious reason for it, not a soul
is working there, of course, and I think I caught a glimpse of the Thames
Water logo in my rear view mirror - but I could be wrong. I chose to return via Eynsham Drive and McLeod Road
so no second view.
There is chaos in Broadway too with an unattended hole dug outside The Wrong ’Un.
The enquiries into the excavations at Oakwood
reveal that they are in preparation for
two blocks of houses. Extensive enquiries suggest that there is a close
family connection between the owners of
Oakwood Pavilion Limited and Oakwood Construct Limited.
It is hard to deny that the owners of Oakwood are very enterprising businessmen
- and women - if perhaps a little devious and Bexley is probably a very corrupt Council.
Harrow Manorway.
18 August (Part 2) - The Enviro-Crime Department may not have received the memo
Bexley’s Planning Department has a long record of eventually making favourable decisions
on applications by our favourite building developer even when he builds on
Council owned land without permission. They issued an enforcement
notice for restoration at the time but it was never enforced.
Another enforcement notice was issued last year and it
expired on 26th
September. The order was to tidy up the Leather Bottle site and reopen the Footpath
that used to run across it. This is not a Planning matter but there was once
again no compliance and Bexley Council told a
local resident that it had begun legal proceedings.
There is no confirmed link but Balmonza, the company that owns the Leather
Bottle site, was summoned to appear before a magistrate in Bexley last May.
Reference
2500752072, but the details are not publicly available.
When the Mayor of Bexley
attended the Shaheedi Jor Mela Festival at the
invitation of the Singhs she was accompanied for no obvious reason by the former
Chairman of the Planning Committee. The link between Brian Bishop and what many
consider to be a rogue developer is obvious although arguably unwise, but why
was the Mayor of Dartford there too?
The Mayor of Dartford is the brother of Bexley Councillor Rags Sandhu
(Conservative, Bexleyheath). His presence is unexplained.
The Sandhu brothers were
first mentioned here in
2013 and 2014 along with Rebecca Sandhu the so called Independent Person sitting on the Code of Conduct Committee. It
was never proved conclusively that there was a connection between Rebecca and the two brothers.
Kulvinder Singh outside his own house lined up with seven Tory Councillors and candidates Including the wife of the then Planning Committee Chairman.
18 August (Part 1) - Sidcup. An even bigger mess
Let’s get away from Sikh things for a moment and dive back into the gridlock
imposed on our roads by Bexley Council and Thames Water.
As I made my way through Sidcup at 05:45 yesterday morning a man was unloading
traffic signs from his truck parked where Sidcup High Street becomes Sidcup
Hill. (A on the map below.)
Sure enough, when I returned an hour later there was a road closed sign on the
left turn into Rectory Lane. A. (Not named on Google Maps at this scale.) I therefore continued to Knoll Road to get back
on route. However the actual road closure began at point B, and as I discovered
in the evening, ended at point C.
I have long held the possibly unkind view that the people who put out temporary
road signs are not the sharpest tools in the box and the road closed sign at A
was particularly stupid. No one affected by the closure of the narrow winding
part of Rectory Lane, B to C, would want to turn left at A. They would take the
direct route down Sidcup Hill.
My evening trip to Bromley was made more difficult by the unnecessary closure sign at A because no
one was turning Left which usually creates a useful break in the traffic flow. The various
diversion signs were a nonsense too. No one knows where drivers are trying to
get to once disrupted by unnecessary signs. If I had followed them I might
have ended up back in Bromley.
By the way, when I arrived in Bromley around 6 a.m. it was obvious that it had
been raining there. Puddles everywhere.
17 August (Part 3) - Somebody should have told her
As mentioned once or twice before, personal circumstances are that I can no longer blog on a Monday or Friday and what you see here
on those days will have been written on the day before; however the submission
of the Shaheedi Jor Mela
photograph this morning demanded that something was quickly cobbled together.
On reflection I felt it might be a little unfair on the current Mayor who has
only been a Councillor for four years and might know nothing about those she
met yesterday. The blog was slightly modified in consideration of that.
Mayor
Lisa Moore probably doesn’t know about Ye Olde Leather Bottle, a listed
building, being demolished in 2015 and remaining a dangerous wreck.
There is no reason to suppose she ever read of me being beaten up by the site
workers or how the Health & Safety Executive successfully prosecuted the new
owner for his reckless working practices.
Lisa was not a Councillor when her ‘new friends’ built on Council land without
planning permission. The Planning Department confirmed it breached the boundary
with Lesnes Abbey Woods yet the Planning Committee forgave the irregularities
and did not ask for reversion to the status quo.
She may not have heard of the total loss of Footpath Number 11 or the Community
Protection Order demanding the vermin ridden site be cleared and the Footpath
restored; an Order which expired last September and totally ignored.
The photograph shown here was taken this evening. No footpath. Still a danger to
every passer-by.
It would be entirely reasonable to assume that Mayor Moore was totally ignorant
of the history of her hosts and might now be embarrassed by it but the same
cannot be said of her companion yesterday. What exactly is the former Chairman
of the Planning Committee whose ward is far away Blackfen doing in Crayford with his old friends?
I suppose it is not as blatant as being pictured inside their houses.
If anyone including the Mayor is unaware of what has been going on over the past
dozen years they might like to peruse
the comprehensive Index.
17 August (Part 2) - Is Bexley Council irredeemably corrupt?
Dear Mayor Lisa-Jane Moore,
Would you care to explain why you appear to be so happy to be associated
with people who have assaulted me twice and attempted to kill me once in an
engineered road incident?
I expect the ‘clever’ people who organise these events invited you to create an
air of respectability and it would be near impossible for you to decline but it
makes Bexley Council look to be irredeemably corrupt given the history of those involved.
That the former Planning Committee Chairman was alongside you yesterday
at the VCD
Athletics ground without any obvious good reason merely emphasises his close
association with the rogue developers who have recently defied a Community
Protection Order issued by Bexley Council. It is not a good look and wearing a Royal British Legion uniform
would in the eyes of everyone who is familiar with the history, sully the
reputation of that organisation. Crayford is a long way from his home territory.
It would be easy to assume that favours are being repaid in one way or the other.
regards,
Malcolm
Mayor Lisa-Jane Moore, centre. Former Planning Committee Chairman 2nd left, Mayor of Dartford, Avtar Sandhu next to him.
17 August (Part 1) - It’s an Enviro Crime, no less
As I left a friends house last Sunday, eight days ago, I commented on an
ornamental tree in her front garden. The lady is a bit of a workaholic when it comes to house maintenance
and she said cutting it back was the next job on her list.
Two days later she received a letter from Bexley Council, part of which is shown
below. It is a perfectly polite letter but apparently her overgrown shrub is an Enviro Crime.
She has her suspicions about who complained because she has a well known
busybody for a close neighbour. He sometimes sends complaints to me too.
So the overgrowing shrub will shortly be for the chop but as the lady says, “if
only they were so eager to clean the streets”. I couldn’t help but notice as I
walked home on Saturday that Abbey Road is a right old mess and maybe I should
photograph some nearby Council owned shrubs which are a danger to pedestrians.
I first told Bexley Council that
motorists approaching the Knee Hill lights
could not see them because of overhanging trees on 28th October last year with
two reminders since and they have done nothing about it. Two tier Bexley.
Council owned overhanging trees.
16 August (Part 3) - It says ‘No boozing’ but does it say ‘No building’ too?
A reader who likes to keep his eye on the Land Registry
website guided me to this snippet of information.
The land being worked on in Crayford was bought in 2020 for £1·2
million by Oakwood Pavilion Ltd registered at 178 Bexley Road.
Numerous people overlooking the VCD site have
said it is Mr. Singh who drives the excavator so there may be a connection
with Oakwood Pavilion
which is owned by a Mr. Rajvir Kaur.
The name Kaur (but not Rajvir) is
linked to the company Balmonza which is another Singh enterprise.
Since I walked past the school on Woodside Road last Wednesday and took the
photo of the parched landscape, an opening has appeared
within the boundary wall exiting on to the school zig-zags.
The Land Registry documents reveal that the land sold is covenanted. I can
understand the bit that says a public house may not be built on the site but I am
not sure about, “nothing herein contained shall prevent the use of the said lands
and premises or any buildings erected thereon as a recreation and sports ground.”
Does that mean that you can’t do anything that stops the land being used for
sporting activities? I am inclined to think it does.
Obviously successful businessmen but why is it that when they step out of line
Bexley Council does nothing about it?
An order was made to clear up the Leather
Bottle site last September but it was ignored. Bexley Council has since then
refused to say anything. And why the need to beat up people who investigate
their operation?
16 August (Part 2) - A chequered history
In 2019, the precise date is not recorded, Belvedere Councillor Daniel
Francis, now an MP, and I were separately summoned to the Health & Safety
Executive HQ in Southwark Bridge Road to be interviewed prior to the possible
prosecution of Kulvinder Singh for unsafe practices at Ye Olde Leather Bottle.
In my case they asked for permission to use photographs in Court and required me to sign them.
Singh and his company were later
successfully prosecuted and the H&SE’s summary of the case
may be read here. (PDF)
Following the prosecution, H&SE took an interest in Mr. Singh’s companies
several more times. Dhadda Estates is one of his many companies and is registered to his home address.
The H&SE website reveals that warnings were issued about working at height, open fuse boxes capable of electrocution, no toilets or washing
facilities, debris left in a dangerous state. Immediate Prohibition Notices were issued.
Using the summary of the 2019 prosecution as a guide to what most upsets the H&SE, a
resident has submitted a formal complaint to H&SE about recent activities at VCD Athletics.
The
Singh family would be of little interest to us if it was not for the Bexley Council associations. What is of great interest is why Bexley Council is so supportive of
an individual who has been forgiven for various planning irregularities and even awarded for his community activities.
Why are Conservative election candidates lined up inside his house for publicity photographs?
Why is the Leader of Bexley Council and the wife of the Planning Committee Chairman (at the time) willing to line up by the side of someone who enjoys a certain reputation?
Money? The Singh family is very wealthy. You have to be to buy the Oakwood sports ground.
Note: Some of the research behind this blog was conducted by Reform UK Councillors and their support team.
16 August (Part 1) - Everyone welcome. Maybe not me
Today
you can join in the Singh family’s (Seeta and Kulvinder) free event at the Oakwood Sports
Ground, especially if you are a teetotal vegetarian.
The event is organised by
the Guru Hargobind Sports Club which is Registered Charity Number 1185085
headquartered at 95 Woolwich Road, SE2. An address known to everyone since
Belvedere Tories chose it for their publicity shots before the 2024 election.
Note: I was confused by the AI summary. Saturday 16th August. This blog briefly appeared on 15th August.
15 August (Part 5) - Nothing to see here
From a reliable Conservative source comes news that Bexley’s planning team
has inspected the VCD site and found that everything was all fine and dandy. I
do hope that no one was assaulted.
My Conservative friend confirms that there is no planning application.
At the moment this is only a man digging his rather large garden.
The first sentence above could equally apply to Ye Olde Leather Bottle in 2015.
A straight into the sun shot of digging and spraying.
15 August (Part 4) - Men at work. But why?
Here is the ground by the VCD pitch being torn up late last night and creating a dust storm. What is Bexley Council doing about it? Nothing.
15 August (Part 3) - VCD Statement
What else would anyone expect?
Click image for the full text.
If VCD Athletics is unhappy with their developer, who is the man in black who came from their clubhouse to assist with my assualt?
15 August (Part 1) - You may not like them but the fact is that Reform UK is fighting for the people of Bexley
Following the events of Wednesday morning a number of people asked to speak to me to
discuss the VCD footballing situation but I know nothing more than is reported here.
It is Bexley Council which may be protecting their favourite property developer
and it would appear that the only people trying to get the truth out of them are
Reform UK Councillors. Their Councillors are already pestering the Planning Officers.
MP Daniel Francis is undoubtedly interested but it is not really an MP’s responsibility. Daniel was instrumental in getting
the
Leather Bottle demolisher fined by the H&SE so will definitely be sympathetic to the risks he might be posing now.
It seems to me that only Reform UK is interested in standing against attacks on
Bexley’s green spaces. It is Reform who have been helping the South Gipsy Road residents
to fight back against the plans for ten noisy Golf Pods at Crook Log and Reform
has been the only party which has tried to help the Stop Go Ape people, but they are a funny lot, not only
asking my webhost to close Bonkers but they don’t want
Reform to help them either.
Thank you to those
who enquired after my health following the threats to decapitate
me but there was no lasting damage. The punch impact faded within the hour and
my camera survived the scuffle after firing off a few random shots.
The correspondent who went to the trouble of telling me that my blogs are boring
- but he keeps on reading them - will be pleased to know that I have abandoned
my plan to discuss the VCD situation today because Reform UK wrote a pretty good
summary of it themselves. So what follows is theirs,
originally published on X, although most of it can be found on Bonkers too.
(The Reform X post is more lavishly illustrated than this blog.)
After 110 years the VCD Football Club had to fold after their new
landlord refused them a lease extension. It isn’t rocket science to work out
what the intention is for this land. It was reported that excavation
suddenly started on the land in the last few days. A surprise to all
No planning permission has been submitted. A JCB was seen excavating an area
on the site. The writer of Bexley is Bonkers made his way to the site to
investigate. What was he met with? Violence. As he took pictures he was
punched in the back and then they tried to get his camera.
This is not the first time this has happened. A similar assault took place
when our intrepid writer visited the Leather Bottle site in Heron Hill. The
Leather Bottle was razed to the ground in 2015 and the site has laid
dormant since then unless visited by less desirables.
Property developer Balmonza Ltd and its director Kulvinder Singh were
prosecuted and fined at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on October 29, 2019,
following the unsafe demolition of Ye Olde Leather Bottle believed to be Bexley’s oldest pub.
Balmonza Ltd was fined £20,000 plus £1,000 in costs, and Singh was
personally fined £5,000 plus £1,000 in costs after pleading guilty to health
and safety breaches. Any connection between the two
developments? It may be in the name.
The Leather Bottle was knocked down by Balmonza Limited owned by Kulvinder
Singh. Kulvinder Singh also owns Oakwood Construct Limited. The owner of the
VCD ground owns Oakwood Pavillion Limited. How strange they have very
similar company names. The plot thickens.
Surely the illustrious Bexley Conservatives would clamp down on builders who
raze buildings to the ground in a dangerous manner. They wouldn’t associate
themselves with someone found guilty of serious health and safety breaches. Read on….
Step forward Council Leader David Leaf, then Deputy Leader. Step forward
Councillor Brian Bishop, Cabinet Member for Communities & Housing, then Vice
Chair of the Planning Committee plus his wife who stood for Belvedere in
2022 and 2024, Mr Singh’s Ward.
Step forward three failed Conservative Belvedere candidates. A tangled web we
weave. In view of the sudden excavation at the VCD ground, Councillor Chris
Calvert, Reform UK Councillor for Belvedere has referred the matter to
Bexley’s planning department. Their answer awaits.
Mr. Singh is pictured here far left. 3rd left is Christine Bishop who stood
for Mr. Singh’s ward in Belvedere. Far right is current Conservative Council
Leader David Leaf. At some stage a planning application will be submitted.
110 years of football thrown away. What will prevail?
It is perhaps worth adding that Christine Bishop was at the time the wife of the
Chairman of the Planning Committee - she still is but The Chairman is promoted
to Cabinet Member - and she has been pictured at the door of Kulvinder Singh and
inside his house. Kulvinder’s father actually nominatnd her and two other Tories.
Both Christine Bishop and her husband were on the Planning Committee which
approved the demolition of the Leather Bottle.
Bexley Conservatives may not be corrupt but they would like you to think they are.
The Index to Kulvinder related things needs an overhaul. The job for today!
14 August - Can I claim a record?
Thames
Water is doing its best to wreck the local economy
A little before 5 p.m. today I took 24 minutes, not
just to get through Sidcup, but to simply pass from one end of the Story Teller
Cinema to the other,
Nothing was moving Southbound on Elm Road. Traffic was coming through Northbound
but towards the A20 everything was at a standstill. People were getting out of
their cars to try to find out what was going on.
The junction with the High Street was blocked by traffic coming from the
West and turning into Elm Road as a result of which nothing could travel from
East to West and South to North was difficult.
When traffic began to move it looked as though the temporary lights were being
manually controlled but there was no obvious reason for the earlier gridlock.
12 August - The Vickers Crayford and Dartford Athletics ground
If I remember correctly, Daniel Francis MP ran some sort of campaign earlier this year to keep
the VCD football team alive. Football is not my thing and I didn’t take
much notice but the team did indeed cease to be because there was no agreement on a lease renewal.
The VCD football ground in Crayford.
Yesterday evening a resident whose house overlooks the ground told me he had woken up to find a
JCB ripping up trees at the VCD site.
Bexley’s Planning Portal is not designed to be helpful and does not reveal any
applications for VCD Athletics in Old Road Crayford but we all know what JCBs without
planning permission can mean. I went to take a look.
There was a JCB working in the distance and it appears on the extreme right of
Photo 2 below but probably not clear enough to see. (A tiny patch of yellow.) I was not able to get any closer
because I was immediately assaulted by a bearded gentleman.
He grabbed my arms, punched me in the back and very nearly wrestled me to the
ground. For a long time he kept hold of my camera trying to throw it to the
ground but the strap held. The struggle produced seven photographs of terra-firma.
I was a See You Next Tuesday and he wanted to cut my F**ing head off.
A man in a black shirt showed up who I at first assumed was coming to my rescue but I was
wrong. Except that he didn’t touch me he was no better than beardie.
As is the way with some of these bearded gentlemen he informed some mothers with children
who were near the exit to the ground, that I was assaulted for trying to take photographs of their
children. Why is child molestation so often the first thought of such people?
They have claimed the same before.
I must now try to prove the obvious link to you know who. At least
I don’t think they were out to kill me this time.
Beardie didn’t appear to have his knife with him.
9 August - 16 New Road, Abbey Wood - Crackers
The
flats being built at 16 New Road Abbey Wood have been featured here before. That is because the plan was
totally wrong for the area in terms of appearance but
Bexley Council¹s rejection
was appealed more than once and the applicant eventually won his case after making concessions.
It remained an ugly blight on the landscape but the site is only a few minutes
walk from Abbey Wood station which seems to be the secret to building with impunity any monstrosity that adds to the housing stock.
It will add to the traffic congestion too.
The developer has not been one of those “considerate contractors” and has upset various neighbours by obstructing
the footpath and occasionally the whole road.
One has suggested that the infamous Mr. Singh is behind it all because of
the ethnicity of the workforce and because the address of the roofing
contractor, Google his phone number 020 8320 6062, is 240 Woolwich Road which I
understood to have been bought by Mr. Singh.
On the other hand Mr. McCann, the roofer, is on record as being
wronged by Mr. Singh and I believe him to be a reputable builder. I was
under the impression that he had sold 240 Woolwich Road to Mr. Singh and
moved to Sidcup but there must be a missing link somewhere. Did he sell his business name too?
The occupants of the bottom end of New Road are not best pleased by the disruption caused by the building works and
reported via FixMyStreet all the
broken paving stones. They are not the easiest thing to photograph but three are shown below.
Bexley Council responded to the report as follows…
The reported issue requires further investigations or work by our
Highways Technicians to resolve, which may include any of the following:
• Carrying out enforcement noticing/investigations that are restricted by set timescales
• Monitor for misuse or gather evidence
• Monitor in heavy rainfall
• Monitor Contractor performance
• Requires re-inspection after other internal/external involvement
Even at the best of times, Bexley is a very difficult place in which to move
around. For out of town readers I should explain that it is divided East to West
by three railway lines bridged only on the few main North to South roads. Add to
that the A2 and A20 trunk roads with even fewer crossing points. The
A2 has four but one is on a minor road that doesn’t go anywhere useful and the
other so far to the west as to be useful to very few of us.
North to South the river Cray divides us and there can be a couple of miles
between bridges. The borough is a large number of self contained and isolated
blocks with no easy way of travelling beyond the adjacent one. Until the coming of Crossrail and the 301 bus there was no way to travel the three miles
from Abbey Wood into
Bexleyheath in much under 40 minutes.
My regular car journey from Abbey Wood to Bromley offers only three routes. Via
Sidcup’s Elm Road with the option of a short cut through The Green, via Sidcup
Hill and Footscray or though Bexley Village and North Cray Road.
At the time of writing North Cray Road and The Green are completely blocked by
Thames Water while Elm Road has been partially blocked by them since January
with no prospect of relief until April 2027. Meanwhile Footscray is blocked by
temporary traffic lights at its only crossroads. Thames Water again. Everywhere you go you hit a
tailback that extends over traffic light junctions which get blocked and no one goes anywhere.
On top of which Bexley has a Highways Department that believes restricting road
widths and parking bays opposite bus stops is the way forward.
It is not much better in Bromley where a cash strapped Council has installed
five Yellow Box Junctions on my route within the past eight months or so.
Note: The Footscray disruption is due to be suspended this
afternoon.
After yesterday’s increase in font size within
paragraphs a further change was made. in mobile portrait mode only, the text was
made bold. This has been well received so the same has been applied to mobile landscape mode too.
Portrait mode is defined as any screen - strictly speaking, the size of the
window displayed on that screen - of 480 pixels width or less and landscape mode is 481
to 800 pixels. If your mobile screen ‘Viewport’ as it is known, is bigger than 800 pixels other rules will apply.
The changes will not be apparent until your browser dumps its file cache, or you force it to do so.
5 August (Part 2) - Still here
As you will have noticed, Bonkers is still on line despite the Stop Go Ape
(SGA) people asking my web host to take it down.
Just to be clear the hosting company has not asked me to change anything, all
they said was that re-posting the SGA Group’s Facebook
announcement slagging me off for describing
a random crowd waiting for a bus as a Gaggle was causing stress or distress
(I forget exactly what they said) to their Administrator.
I am puzzled, and maybe the webhost is too, by the suggestion that publishing
their criticism of me to SGA’s 300 followers on Facebook is stress free but
repeating it on Bonkers merited legal threats because the author was distressed
by it. Self publication is something to laugh about but re-publication is shaming. It defies logic.
The hosting company made no comment on the allegation that I had ‘stolen’ a Facebook comment referencing myself.
Illogical though the SGA leaders may be I have
no wish to cause any vulnerable person stress so I modified
the ‘offending’ page somewhat. In order to protect my sources
I had implied that I stumbled across SGA’s Facebook comments accidentally which
was I think interpreted as me having hacked into their Private Group.
In fact it was sent to me by a Member of their Group who presumably found the
Administrator’s glee about having a go at me somewhat distasteful. Obviously I
do not really care if someone has failed to check the word Gaggle in a
dictionary but it did seem worthwhile to give BiB readers some idea of who they might be supporting.
The SGA GoFundMe page
is struggling. Think twice before you donate to it.
5 August (Part 1) - Bigger but not necessarily better
As a concession to
the almost blind reader who requested a larger font for blog
paragraphs the size used for viewing on a phone in portrait mode was
increased yesterday but this led to it being bigger than when viewed in
landscape mode so as of today that is a bit bigger too. This led to increases for
Tablets and Desktops, in fact everything other than on an Ultra HD TV screen
where the text should be more than big enough already.
Personally I am not too keen on the changes so if you feel the same please say so. (†)
The foregoing only applies to text within paragraphs and not headings and captions etc.
and will not take effect until the browser cache refreshes.
† Subsequently making the larger text bold looks a lot better to my eye, so it will probably stay that way now.
4 August - Bexley Council: Now what have they got to hide?
While
writing about the outrageous plan to
subject the residents of South Gipsy Road
to the constant noise of golf club against ball all day every day until
9 p.m., I obviously wanted to read up on what those residents had said, but their
comments were not on the Council’s website. Everything else was there, but not public comments.
I assumed it was a temporary glitch but apparently not. Two days later there are
still no comments. We cannot see what was said or who might have said it.
It begins to look very fishy. What is Bexley Council trying to hide this time?
Constant gunshot sounds from ten practice pods will be intolerable and a short
site visit to a similar facility can in no way replicate the experience of
living next to such a noise all day long.
The Planning Officer who said out loud at a public meeting that such noises were acceptable must be out of
his tiny mind. As well as noise there will be floodlighting. No one yet knows
how intense that will be and still the Planning Committee failed to reject the application outright.
The applicant, GolfPodCo, already has two pod facilities which are pictured on
their website (see below) and neither of them are only 50 feet from neighbouring houses.
The application is a cynical attempt to distract a penniless Council from its primary purpose of protecting its residents.
The fact that our Council has not will provoke all sorts of suspicions as to why they have not.
2 August - Bexley Council prepares to whack its residents once more
It
was suggested that I break with tradition again and take a look at the Planning
Application for a Golf Pod at the Crook Log Leisure Centre and reluctant as I am
to cover sports facilities beginning with the letters G and O I did so. But first
some research. What the hell is a Golf Pod?
The image shown here is extracted from the applicant’s website and shows one of
their facilities buried deep in the countryside. As you can imagine,
would-be
golfers whack a ball towards a net. In this case up to ten whackers at a time.
Computers assess how far the ball might have travelled and where it might have
gone if it was not for the net. Me and balls have never got on well together so
why anyone would pay to swing a stick I have no idea but good luck to those who do.
As
you may see from the map, Bexley’s Golf Pod is not going to be buried deep in the
countryside but in a field adjacent to the Crook Log Leisure Centre which is
occasionally used as an overflow car park. I was ushered into it when attending
the 2014 election count. It was waterlogged at the time and took ages to get to the exit.
Council Officers were keen to get this facility approved. Local residents rather
less so. As a lady objector said, it is only 55 feet from back gardens and close
to children’s bedrooms to the rear of the houses in South Gipsy Road.
I took the opportunity to research how loud the thwack of club upon ball is and
found figures of around 100dB ranging to 120dB although one night hope that the
noisiest titanium clubs will not be used. All day submission to such noise
levels will damage hearing although the measuring distance was not specified. More
generally noise is usually measured at one metre distance.
As with the image above there will be ten bays 4·2 metres high. The net
would rise to 16·8 metres. (55 feet.) Councillor Terry Barcock
(Conservative, Sidcup) later said that as it was only netting and therefore
effectively transparent the height was not a concern. I don’t think he lives in
South Gipsy Road.
The Planning report said there would be no impact on local residents which
seemed more than a little glib and the residential objector felt the same way. Noise
reports referred to hourly averages, she said, but golf strikes are frequent and of high
intensity. “The applicant has accepted that the noise will be easily perceptible to
neighbouring residents. It is not a background hum, it is a repeated crack seven days a week until 9 p.m.”
The applicant’s website describes typical settings for pods which do not include
residential areas. Why would the Committee contemplate taking away the tranquility of a back garden?
The trees being relied upon for screening are deciduous and offer little
protection against noise and light pollution. Lighting levels have not yet been
decided and the Committee is being asked to approve the application in ignorance.
Independent Councillor Dave Curtois
(Falconwood & Welling) said that ward Councillors were not advised
of the application and neither were many of the local residents and that is unacceptable. Contrary to claims in
the report, the trees do not protect some of the adjacent properties at all.
The applicant’s representative did not in any way attempt to justify the
buildings but only pushed the benefits of relatively inexpensive additional
sports facilities. It will improve attendance at the Leisure Centre overall.
Councillor Terry Barcock said it was not right that residents
had to put up with noise pollution all day but he appeared to be satisfied when
told about an unspecified noise management plan.
Councillor Oscar Harrison (Conservative, Longlands) also asked about specific noise issues
but his question could not be answered except by reference to a similar but larger
facility adjacent to the A20 in Chislehurst which allegedly does not generate noise
complaints. The Planning Officer was consistently dismissive of noise concerns, “they were acceptable”. The arrogance
shone through like a beacon.
Councillor Larry Ferguson (Labour, Thamesmead East) said he lives not far from a
football pitch but the noise is tolerable. I think he must have been confused by the difference between an
occasional 90 minutes of distant boot on leather against constant gunshot sounds barely 50 metres from bedrooms.
At around this point there were interruptions from the floor and threats of ejection but the webcast was
soon muted so exactly what happened is impossible to say.
Chairman Kurtis Cristoforides asked how far the previously approved Padel Court was
from residential property but the Planning Officer didn’t know. Kurtis was much more
apprehensive about sudden impact noise and felt he would like to go and listen
at a golf club. We don’t want to later find ourselves in a residential garden
and think “Gosh what have we done? If we get this wrong the impact will be very severe.”
His sensible view prevailed. No one supported the application so a deferral was approved.
The way that Planning Officers seem to be willing to impose constant noise on
residents with apparently no consideration for them at all is a worrying phenomenon. Why?
1 August - Has Bexley Council done it again?
Bexley
Council has appointed a new Director of Place, Gary Jones recently of Basildon
Borough Council, a very important position and one must hope Bexley has chosen well.
That has not always been the case.
Basildon Council has not been well run, seven Monitoring Officers in 18 months.
Bexley has sometimes been careless with Monitoring Officers too. It once recruited one who
had not long before been criticised by a judge for racism and bullying and
another was belatedly found to lack the required legal qualifications.
Recruitment in Bexley has often proved to be ill-judged. The
earliest Chief Executive that i can remember claimed to have health problems and
retired prematurely with a generous pay off and pension, only to reappear in a
similar post at another London Council a short time later.
His replacement came from Croydon with a skeleton or two attached. He brought
with him the Police Borough Commander and his Deputy and when he moved to Tower
Hamlets he took them both with him again. Isn’t that a little odd?
In Tower Hamlets he got mixed up in a
bribery scandal which hit the news nationally. Allegedly guilty only of not reporting it to the police.
Another Chief Executive was
recruited from Cornwell where she had acquired something of a reputation for excessive expenses.
A Finance Director was recruited who had failed to notice multi-million pound
frauds in his department at two different local authorities.
Employing a husband and wife team as Director and Deputy was just plain
weird. Annual report time must have been a bit fraught and did they ever manage to go on
holiday together?
The new Director of Place was probably glad to get away from Basildon. Occasionally Bexley has recruited
someone who did a decent job, a couple of names spring to mind. Fingers crossed
that Mr. Jones turns out to be another.
